


you showed me love was all you needed

by bobbimqrse



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 07:45:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6365368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbimqrse/pseuds/bobbimqrse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’ll die here and never leave. But he can go home.<br/>Maybe they’ll be together again one day.</p><p>**</p><p>AU of 3x13 in which Bobbi and Hunter don't get out of Russia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you showed me love was all you needed

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote all 2k of this today because apparently 'Parting Shot' wasn't angsty enough for me oops 
> 
> Title is from 'Heaven' by Beyonce 
> 
> Please don't kill me.

She drums her fingers on the table. If he were beside her, he’d place his hand over hers and lace their fingers together, probably make some sarcastic comment that was way too out of place in the situation. It would calm her down though and she would squeeze his hand back.  

Except he’s not there. His scream bounces around in her skull. _Let me speak to Bobbi_. Remembering the familiar nickname spoken in a rushed, panicked tone threatens to ruin her composure all over again. He told her not to tell them anything. She wonders where he is, what they’re doing to him while she sits helplessly drumming her fingers. She blinks slowly and breathes out. It’s the best she can do to not screw her eyes shut and not open them again until she wakes up from this horrific nightmare.

She falters when she realises the rhythm she’s been tapping out – the simple piano chords that were playing when he’d proposed to her. His proposal had been terribly cliché when nothing else in their relationship had been. He’d gotten down on one knee in a candlelit restaurant in the city of love. _Je t’aime. Veux-tu m'épouser?_  She’d said yes almost immediately. It was the happiest she’d ever been.

That image is what she holds on to now - kissing him like nothing else mattered on the _Pont Alexandre III_. They’d been truly happy then, for those few hours, lost in each other before they came crashing back to reality and had to obtain intel from one of her contacts in Paris.

Her lips curve up in a slight smile. Even on the worst days of their marriage, she never did regret saying yes.  

 

* * *

 

 When the door clicks, she clenches her jaw and slips on her mask of indifference. Her eyes are trained on the walls, filling her vision with grey. It hits her then that maybe it’ll be the last thing she ever sees. Someone walks in, and she slowly turns her head, careful to appear nonchalant still.

“Mr Hunter has been found guilty,” is the first thing her interrogator says.

Hearing those words, it’s like finding out that SHIELD had fallen when a trusted friend had tried to shoot her in the head at point blank range. Only it’s ten times worse because this is _Hunter_ and they want to kill him. She clasps her hands together tightly in her lap, mind racing to come up with something to calm her down. It has to be a bluff, a way to manipulate her by keeping them separated.

“Do you still have nothing to say?”

His smug tone makes her want to throw up and lunge across the table to strangle him simultaneously. Hunter’s not just some political tool to use to save face after a failed coup. He’s _everything._ Her chest twinges when she thinks of him and she knows it’s not anything to do with her bad lung.

 _Don’t tell them anything, Bob_. She thinks of her friends, the team that had broken through her walls and become her family scarily fast. The last thing he said to her was a promise that no matter what, they wouldn't endanger their friends. She'll never betray them, but that doesn't stop the almost overpowering urge to confess everything if there's a chance it will save his life and let her hold him close. 

“I want to see him,” she settles for. She keeps her composure because she has to – for all of them.

Her interrogator at least looks unsettled at her refusal to give SHIELD up, doubt at his read on her plainly obvious in his expression. If she wasn’t terrified, it’d be a victory.

She’s not naïve enough to believe there’s a way out of this that ends well, but if she can get the upper hand, maybe she can get Hunter out at least. That’s all she wants.

“As you wish, Miss Morse.”

 

* * *

 

_No._

Three guards escort her into a room with a glass partition on one side and it’s then that she knows what’s about to happen. They have her restrained far too quickly to fight back. Even if she could, there’s nowhere to go in an Interpol compound full of agents.

“I said I wanted to see him,” she growls, composure slipping fast.

“You will,” responds the interrogator.

“That is not what I meant. You can’t do this. That trial was bullshit and you know it.”

“I told you, Miss Morse, I am your _only_ ally here.”

“He didn’t do this. _I_ did. I shot them.” It's reckless and stupid to condemn them both, but it's her only option. 

“Mr Hunter says otherwise. He told us that you had nothing to do with it.”

“He said that to protect me. Witnesses saw me with that gun. It was _me_.”

She raises her hands to press them against the glass. This was all her fault. He was only ever with SHIELD because of how much it meant to her. He shouldn’t be involved in this at all.

“Let me take his place,” she begs “What does it matter to you which one of us takes the fall for it? Let it be me. I’ve been SHIELD all my life, I’m more plausible than a mercenary. What are you going to say when they ask who his contractor was? He’s not the one you want. I-“

“It’s too late, Miss Morse,” her interrogator interjects, not even flinching “There’s nothing I can do.”

There’s no more time to bargain as they bring him out and her mouth goes dry. She tries to say something but there’s no way to vocalise the terror that turns her blood to ice as she watches him being led to his death.

She clutches at the rail she’s cuffed to, searching for an anchor and knowing she won’t find one because it’s him and he’s on the other side of the glass. She’s drowning and the people around her are pushing her under the water, laughing as she struggles to fight against their hands.

“Don’t,” she whispers. Everything feels wrong, too heavy. “Please.”

Hunter looks in her direction and for a moment she thinks that he can see her, that he knows she’s with him always and that if she could just reverse time, she’d never let him go again. But his expression doesn’t change and he looks back to where the agent is directing him, walking willingly. She wants to yell at him to fight back, to stay alive for her, to _live_.

Straps are fastened around his arms, his legs, his chest, snuffing out any last hope.

A hood is pulled over his head.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want. Just please don’t do this.” Her voice cracks with desperation. She can’t lose him. But she can’t talk her way out of this because there’s been a trial and someone wants blood and nothing she says now can help. She can’t take the bullet this time because she’s trapped behind a layer of glass _. No. No. No._

The firing squad get into position. She knows exactly what he would tell her, can hear his voice so clearly. _Close your eyes, Bob. Don’t look. I’ll be okay._ Yet, she can’t tear her eyes away as the guns are raised and aimed at him. She can’t leave him to do this alone even if he can’t see her.

_I love you. I love you so much._

There’s a terrible series of bangs and his body jerks with the impact. She breaks then, sliding down the partition to her knees. She rests her head on the glass, body shaking with enough force to vibrate it as she cries. His head is slumped forward, chin resting on his chest and blood soaking through his shirt. He’s so still.

A choked sob rips its way from her throat. She bangs on the glass with an anguished scream, willing it to shatter and fall away so she can be with him one last time. There was no goodbye, no last kiss. God, she never got to tell him yes - _yes I’ll marry you again, of course I will_ \- and that it’s everything she wants.

Wanted.

This, she realises distantly, is heartbreak. To watch the life leave him so suddenly and not be able to make it right. To have everything so quickly become past tense. This is hell.

“Let’s go,” says a guard, taking her upper arm.

They killed him. They left him to die alone.

Instinct takes over and she cries out, smashing her fist into his jaw and then jabbing at his throat. The other guard rushes to help and she stumbles as he tries to grab the length of chain that had kept her attached to the railing. It’s not enough to stop her as she loops her cuffed hands around his neck and drags him backwards.

More agents rush in as the man who interrogated her cries out and the short confrontation ends with her pinned down, someone pressing her head hard against the cold concrete ground. The man she choked coughs and calls her a feral bitch. If she had the strength or the will, she’d tell him it was what happened when you watch the love of your life die. Her body goes limp as she sobs on the floor, barely able to catch her breath.

As they cuff her wrists behind her back and haul her to her feet, the last thing she sees is the hood being removed and Hunter’s face missing his trademark grin and the light in his eyes when he smiled at her. She'll never see that again. He's gone. She sags with another broken sob.

 

* * *

 

Bobbi breaks her silence the seventh time the interrogator comes in. She's accepted that even if her government could clear her name for the assassinations, she’ll never go free after putting two of their agents in hospital. It doesn’t matter to her. Without him, everywhere would be the same as this dark empty cell.

“I want his body to be returned to England. To his parents,” she says, voice rough and scratchy. They’d left her alone for hours and she’d cried until she was dizzy enough that she felt the world spinning around her, until she physically couldn't cry anymore.

“What?” Hunter’s murderer raises his eyebrow at her.

She looks up at him dangerously, eyes hardened and cold. The chain attaching her cuffed hands to the table had been shortened after her stunt, but that doesn’t matter now. She’d failed to protect him. Killing the General was supposed to save him, implicate her and her only, not lead to him being shot. This is the last thing she can do for him.

“He will be given a proper burial. But not here. He gets to go home.”                  

“That’s not protocol.”

“I don’t give a _damn_ about protocol. You send him home, I sign your confession.”

“And if I say no?”

“I’m a former SHIELD agent. I can hold out far longer than you’re willing to wait for a resolution. That bullshit trial won’t stand if anyone questions it. You need a proper confession,” she says as she leans forward. His murderer takes a step back. “You just killed your only leverage over me. You won’t say no.”

Her voice sounds foreign to her ears, emotionless and calculated even though her whole body aches as she recalls the gunshots and the way his body slumped forward and her eyes sting from the tears.

She’ll die here and never leave. But he can go home.

Maybe they’ll be together again one day.

A document is placed in front of her and two agents watch over her as she picks up the pen. God knows what she’s confessing to. She scans it to make sure there was nothing tying her to SHIELD or anyone but herself, nothing to hurt anybody else she cares about. Other than that, they can blacklist her for whatever they want.

All that matters is him.

He would’ve wanted her to get out. That’s why he didn’t fight them. She hopes he’ll forgive her for giving up. She just isn’t strong enough to keep going without him.

Most importantly, she hopes he knows that she chose him and that she loved him with every part of her.

The pen glides across the paper without pause as she signs her name - Barbara Morse.

Her heart breaks a little further that she never got the chance to make it Barbara Hunter again.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on twitter and tumblr (bobbimqrse for both).
> 
> Please come talk to me about these two idiots in love and Most Wanted :)


End file.
